Thursday, August 20, 2009

Aggregators and Blogs- what are they?

Marhaba (hello in Arabic).

Aggregators are basically like your own personal newspaper. You subscribe to what you want to read and it comes to you. This sort of device would be great in a classroom environment as students wouldn’t have to go out searching for information because once it is all set up- it comes to them. It is easy to unsubscribe to too. Aggregators are definitely one of my favourite online tools now!

And I probably should have written about blogs first but I guess now is better than never. A blog is an online journal device. I still prefer the hand written type myself but I have no complaints with the creation of this blog because it was so simple to do. A couple of clicks and ‘ta da’ there it was. This blog has been great to use as a reflection tool. I would never have believed that I was capable of learning about so many technology tools in such a short time. Although in hindsight it would have been nicer to of done two or three each week rather than all at once in one topic heading but that probably comes back to my time management. It has also been incredible reading and commenting on other peoples blogs as their journey is technically the same as my own, their interpretation is different.

Jennifer Moon states that learning journals come in many different guises (including blogs) and can be utilised to fulfil different purposes. She also says that the writing usually accompanies a programme of learning and that learning journals are a means of facilitating the learning or assessing it. John Dewey's research supports this form of learning as it allows students to engage with and enlargen their educational experience while also allowing them to think and reflect on this learning. Which I guess is what we have done here (university students and their blogs) and can in turn pass on as a teaching strategy to use in our classrooms.

I believe some students would enjoy doing this (a blog) to record their thoughts and ideas while others might still prefer the hand written type of journal. Students could be creative by adding online tools as we have done with ours and teach others how to use them. It would be interesting to give them a set topic to discuss, interpret and record their ideas and thoughts although as educators we would definitely have to consider security and safety concerns.

Ma'a Assalama (bye in Arabic).

References:

Moon, J. (2008). Learning Journals and Logs, Reflective Diaries.UCD Dublin: Centre for Teaching and Learning.

Smith, M.K. (2001). John Dewey and informal Education.
http:// www. infed.org. /thinkers/et-dewey.htm

Retrieved from Wikipedia on August 20th, 2009. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aggregator

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